Proxy devices operate by intercepting network traffic flows between clients and servers. Once intercepted in, for example, a transmission control protocol, the packets may be inspected so that malicious communications can be prevented from reaching their desired destinations. Proxy devices may also help prevent data fragmentation by ensuring dropped packets are successfully retransmitted and acknowledged. The proxy device will copy the packets of the network traffic, locally storing the copies of the packets. The proxy device will then take responsibility for acknowledgement and retransmission of the packets. Only after the packets have been acknowledged will the copied packets be deleted at the proxy device.
When multiple connections are proxied through a single device, the memory and computing demands on the proxy device can result in degraded performance of network transmissions. Specifically, high network traffic will require the proxy to store a high volume of packets. If the traffic demands exceed the memory or computing abilities of the device, network traffic performance will suffer.